Top Ten Cosmetic Urban Legends

byPerry Romanowskion09/10/2013

The great thing about the Internet is that you can learn almost anything that you want to know about. Often, you can get the information for free. But the downside to the Internet is that it is so easy to publish that

Anyone can write anything about anything

Most people have no way of knowing whether something is true or not. This is especially true when it comes to cosmetics and the chemicals that are used in them. Fortunately, there are websites like Snopes and The Beauty Brains to bust the myths behind cosmetics. But I thought it would be amusing to list some of the top 10 myths about beauty products that I could find. Feel free to add your own…

7. Waterproof sunscreen will cause blindness. No, it won’t. Cosmetics are safety tested and it is easily demonstrated that waterproof sunscreens don’t cause blindness. Imagine how many blind people there would be if it did.

It’s hard to be a cosmetic chemist these days as the Internet makes passing myths and BS so easy and many people in the world lack the critical thinking skills to sniff out the BS from reality. But I do find these things interesting as they are almost always rooted in some fact or idea that people got a bit wrong.

In Brazil: salt (sodium chloride) is bad for the hair. It’s so strong here that companies like P & G and Unilever had to launch special shampoo versions to Brazil: Pantene and Dove without sodium chloride.